Ringadoc officials have announcing the closing of the company's seed round of funding, and are ready to take the company's cloud-based platform for providers to a new level.
The San Francisco-based company, which unveiled Ringadoc Exchange in January to compete with the likes of American Well and Teladoc, recently raised $700,000 to close out its seed round at $1.9 million. Among the investors are Practice Fusion founder and CEO Ryan Howard; Lyle Dennis, chief of neurology at Bon Secours Health System; and Sharon Knight, former president of One Medical Group. The round was led by Founder's Fund seed vehicle FF Angel, Siemer VC of Los Angeles, and the Telegraph Hill Group.
Jordan Michaels, co-founder and CEO of Ringadoc, which was launched in 2010 at the Health 2.0 Conference as a software application connecting consumers with a licensed physician, said the funding will be used to push the company further into the telehealth market.
"We will be using the funding to increase the sales and marketing efforts for the answering service product as well as added functionality and flexibility," he said in an interview this week. "We will be building out integration options for our users to seamlessly work with other practice efficiency tools, such as EHRs, practice management software and patient portals."
"We're capturing, documenting and logging two-way conversations between patients and physicians outside of the office that (are) a very important component of the entire healthcare conversation, that (were) previously left undocumented and untracked," he added. "Closing this loop for doctors' offices, as well as patients, is key to improving patient engagement, quality of care, and access."
According to Michaels, Ringadoc Exchange, which enables physicians to triage their own patient calls from a smartphone or other mobile device, has handled more than 100,000 phone calls and saved physicians an estimated $500,000 in the six months that the service has been in use. As of January, the network had encompassed more than 500,000 patients and 100 providers in 20 states.
"Ringadoc has identified a way to create efficiencies for physicians while still providing quality care for patients," said Dan Chen, managing director of Siemer VC, in a press release. "They enable physicians and other healthcare providers to be more productive, which will be extremely important in a reimbursement environment that will become increasingly challenging in the future."
Michaels pointed out that physicians will be looking for new methods to increase practice efficiency and improve clinical outcomes as the nation's healthcare system sees a decrease in doctors and a massive influx in new patients by 2014. They're looking for mHealth and telehealth solutions that allow them to better manage their time and their patients' experiences.
“By streamlining after-hours communication, we’ve created a simple solution to what is currently a huge pain point for doctors and their staff," he said in the May 16 press release that announced the closing of the seed round. "Ringadoc reduces the human error associated with costly answering services and live operators by allowing the doctor to hear the patient’s issue in their own voice and words. At that point the doctor is empowered to decide how they would like to respond to that message."
